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He added: “Because the scaffolding was in we were able to lower the whale skeletons, which hadn’t been looked at for more than 100 years.

“Getting them down and back up was pretty hairy, they had to be lowered down on cables.

“The condition has been checked and they have been treated and cleaned.

“It is quite meticulous and a lot of work. It can’t be done in a slapdash manner. It will be really fun to re-open the museum — a lot of people have missed it. It will be great not to have to put buckets out on a regular basis.”

The neo-Gothic Grade I museum hosts the university’s zoological, entomological and geological specimens.

Including archives, the zoological collections have more than 250,000 specimens including the most complete remains of a dodo in the world.